Saudi East-West pipeline faces three to five weeks of repairs

Saudi Arabia's East-West crude pipeline is likely to stay mostly shut for three to five weeks after last week's drone strike, two regional officials briefed on the repairs told the Associated Press on 14 September. One official said the line might run at a reduced rate while crews work on a damaged pumping station. They would not say how much oil could still move.

The 1,200-kilometre pipeline carries crude from the eastern fields to export terminals at Yanbu on the Red Sea. Its design capacity is about 7 million barrels a day. Rystad Energy said on Monday that actual flows since late August had averaged 2.6 to 4 million barrels a day. That volume is now at risk of leaving the market if the line stays closed.

Saudi authorities shut the pipeline on Thursday after an attack they blamed on drones launched by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. Satellite images circulated on Sunday showed a pumping station blackened by fire. Aramco had not answered AP's request for a public repair timetable. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said he expected the line back "very soon," a shorter horizon than the officials described to AP.

Why Yanbu stocks only buy a few days

Industry sources told Reuters that storage at Yanbu can support exports for five to seven days if the pipe does not restart. After that, buyers who have relied on Red Sea liftings lose a route that has been Saudi Arabia's main workaround since tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz seized up in the Iran war.

For six months the East-West line let Riyadh keep selling crude even while Gulf loadings were constrained. DBS energy research head Suvro Sarkar said an outage beyond the Yanbu stock cushion would be a "huge disruption" and that prices could test $120 a barrel if the repair calendar stays long. Brent had already jumped more than 3 percent, trading near $108 to $110, levels last seen in May.

Riyadh recently told OPEC that August output was the lowest since 1990. The pipeline outage therefore hits a producer that is already pumping less, not a system with spare barrels sitting in the east.

A second choke point in the Red Sea

The same 24 hours brought a separate blow to the southern exit. Houthi forces took Greater and Lesser Hanish, islands about 160 kilometres north of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, according to both Houthi and Yemeni government officials. The group had already seized Perim and pushed toward Mocha. Melius Research said about 3 million barrels a day had been moving through Bab el-Mandeb in early September and that the figure is "likely zero now."

That combination is the market's problem. Hormuz is impaired. The East-West pipe to Yanbu is impaired. The strait that connects the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean is under Houthi guns. Each route can move some oil in isolation. Together they leave Saudi export planning with thin options and leave Asian and European refiners bidding for whatever still sails.

The officials who described the three-to-five-week repair window spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the press. Their account is the most specific public timetable available. It can still be wrong. Pumping-station repairs sometimes finish faster than first estimates, and Wright's comment suggests Washington has been told a shorter story. Traders are pricing the longer one.

What happens after the Yanbu tanks run down is the number that matters for households. Four percent of global supply is the figure attached to the pipeline's wartime role. If even half of the recent 2.6 to 4 million barrels a day stays off the water for a month, diesel and jet fuel markets that are already tight will stay tight. The political fight over who launched Thursday's drones will run in parallel. The barrels will not wait for that argument to end.